


Heavy are the Shoulders who Fly with Wax Wings

by postmortem



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (they're 17 when it happens so if that spooks you my bad), (though it's not too terribly descriptive), Angst, Bill is Icarus, Canon Compliant, Coming of Age, M/M, Pining, Sexual Content, Stan POV, Stan is Atlas, Underage Drinking, Unhappy Ending, everyone thought Reddie's were the clowns but rly its the Stan/Anyone shippers, poorly concealed greek imagery, so you know what that means, too many poetic descriptions, tw suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 05:14:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20168728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postmortem/pseuds/postmortem
Summary: "For all that we could have been,we are Icarus and Atlas, again.In this, this restless rapture of sky and skin,the heavens find no mercy from the seas within.This is our story; a sunburnt, saltwater sin." -p.dOr; Stan and Bill throughout the years.





	Heavy are the Shoulders who Fly with Wax Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Me writing this in one sitting of 8-9 hours? Me barely editing it because I'm tired and I didn't sign up for this except I really did? It's more likely than you think!  
A huge thank you to Emma (lemonadeandrice), for taking this pos on very suddenly and hyping it up more than it deserved. Love you!!
> 
> P.S: Poem was written by the wonderfully talented [Phi!](https://lostcap.tumblr.com/post/119465843788/for-all-that-we-could-have-been-we-are-icarus#notes)  
P.S.S: crisp high five to anyone who spots the shameless NBC Hannibal reference   
Enjoy!

Stan has found, over the course of his life, that truth is often stranger than fiction.

He grew up wise, too wise some might say, and was never one to shy away from the burden of reality. Never one to find himself lost in what might be, or to daydream of something he could never truly have. That just wasn’t how life worked. 

His apathetic acceptance, the very reasonable goals, the precise perfectionism, had made him stand out. Not in a pleasant way. 

As he aged, Stan often found himself bruised and bleeding from schoolmates he never really looked in the eyes. Though the whispers of critical family members, the _judgement_, had always felt worse.

He didn’t have many solaces in his childhood, and that was fine, he supposed. 

Because he had the stars. 

He was young, perhaps six or seven, the first time someone has spit the word ‘freak’ at him. The venom, the hatred of it had cut into him. Curled heavy around his shoulders and seeped into his skin until it bled into his heart. He remembers running home and locking himself away in his room with wet, shaky breaths and hot tears. 

Even though he was the one to choose solitude, Stan felt _alone_.

Desperate for distraction, he had opened the window opposite of his door, and kicked at the screen ferociously until it bent enough to be pushed away.

Stan crawled out onto the fire escape, breathless, to sit silently in the presence of ink and silver.

A melancholy feeling of calmness had come over him, and as he delved into the arms of the night, he found something in himself that felt solid. Real.

It is the first time he felt destined. For what, he wasn’t sure, but it balmed the ache in his chest and lifted the heaviness from his shoulders.  
  
**  
  
Stan is seven when he meets Bill Denbrough.

They shared the same first grade class, and he introduced himself in the circle of students in a stuttering voice. 

Stan watches as he struggles to pronounce ‘Georgie’; his little brother who his parents are expecting, apparently. He watches students snicker behind hands, watches as their teacher tries to gently say the word for him in an attempt to move on.

Watches as Bill shakes his head roughly at her and spits it out with such a confidence it was like he never stuttered it in the first place.

Stan watches him a lot, but the first thing Stan notices about him is that he glows. Bright, like the sun.

He hates the thought of it, what did something like that even mean anyway? So, he ignores it, ignores Bill. 

He succeeds, until he doesn’t.

As he’s leaving to walk home from school, ears twitching and eyes on the look-out, he hears the knocking of bodies hitting the brick wall on the side of the entrance.

No, not bodies. A body.

Stan peers around the corner and sees a group he easily recognizes as the Bowers gang crowding around a boy Stan wishes he couldn’t easily recognize.  
Bill stays slouched on the ground as blood pours from his hands clutched around his nose. He looks up them with such a heated glare Stan can feel from where he’s hiding behind the corner ten feet away.

“W-w-what’s the matter, billy? C-c-cat got your t-tongue?” Henry taunts as he pulls back a leg to kick at him and something knocks around in Stan’s chest.

“Stop it!”

Stan doesn’t register the shout is his until five pairs of eyes dart over to him in varying amounts of shock.

Honestly, Stan is just as shocked as they are.

He breathes in to steady himself, tries harder to focus on the fact that he didn’t come up with anything else to say, to do, before jumping in. He clenches and unclenches his fists.

He doesn’t do this; doesn’t act out so loudly on his emotions, doesn’t draw attention to himself, doesn’t play the martyr for kids he barely knows. Not when the odds are always against him.

He feels like a man possessed.

“Get away from him” he says, before Henry or anyone else can say something, “Or else I’m calling one of the teachers.”

It’s a 50/50 shot, he knows it. Henry and his gang rarely care for what teachers have to say, and they care even less for the kids who rat them out.  
Stan swallows. 

They all stand still for a few charged seconds, before Henry blows out a laugh. He looks down at Bill as if he’s suddenly become the most boring thing on the planet. He raises his eyes back to Stan’s. Without ever looking away, he tilts his head towards his friends with a quiet “Come on, guys.” 

They seem unsure, and Stan is too, but he repeats himself more firmly. They grumble and kick dirt at Bill with varying levels of distasteful looks and begin to walk away. Towards Stan. As they go to pass him, Henry still never breaks eye contact, and Stan tries hard to not let the sick, panicky feeling show on his face.  
Henry smiles at him, not at all kindly, “See you Monday.” He whispers.

They move around the corner and Stan feels his shoulders drop with relief. 

“T-thank you.” He hears, quietly, and his gaze is drawn to Bill in an instant. 

Stan isn’t sure what to say. He should, he knows. Just a simple, “no problem” or an “anytime”, but the he knows neither one would be the truth.

Stan nods, once, twice. 

He can tell Bill waits for him to say something else, anything else, but no words come.

He smiles, anyways, and it feels infinitely better than the sneer Henry gave him. “Bill.” He offers.

“I know.” He offers back.

Bill smiles wider, and Stan can see blood on his teeth. 

“Wanna w-walk home with me?”

He should say no, a voice scolds him. Him and Bill would only mean trouble. They would draw attention. Two weird, losers coming together to become something stronger than themselves. Like a revolution. 

Stan walks home with Bill Denbrough.  
  
**  
  
The two grow close, as Stan had once figured. 

Sometimes, he wishes it weren’t so easy to tumble into a friendship with Bill. More often than not, though, he thinks it seemed inevitable. Divine in some way Stan didn’t give too much thought to. 

Like they were made to be with the other.

They fall into an easy rhythm of spending their school days huddled, chatting quietly in the corners of their classroom, before walking home together. They alternated who dropped who off. It took a mere two weeks for Bill to finally ask Stan if he wanted to stay at his house for a while. 

It took two more weeks for Stan to say yes. 

He finds himself in Bill’s room, watching him recite tongue-twisters to practice on his stutter. His legs were curled into himself, and his knees brushed against Stan’s while they sat on his bed. 

As sunlight bathed the room in golden hues that swirled and blanketed them, Stan, as he once again figured, never wanted to leave.  
  
**  
  
He’s thirteen, and it starts with a woman in a painting.

Fear is insistent, everywhere, and Stan can feel it curdle in his heart, his lungs, his head. The terror and panic weigh him down and down; thick and black, like oil, that rises and bubbles and fills him up until he could drown in it.

All he sees are golden eyes and sharp, jagged teeth. Truth is often stranger than fiction, indeed.

The only thing that keeps him afloat is Bill, who holds onto each of them with wiry hands and wild eyes, who screams and kicks and doesn’t back down once in It’s presence. 

Bill doesn’t listen to anything anyone says to him, flies higher and higher to try to take back what It took from him. Stan watches as his wings are caged in It’s arms, watches him beg and cry for them to leave him behind, to let him tumble into the sea below. 

They win, technically, though Stan wonder’s what part of him he lost with It.  
  
**  
  
A month later, Stan forgets how Eddie broke his arm. 

He feels like a terrible friend because, really, who forgets something like that? He doesn’t ask Eddie, and he doesn’t ask Richie because it would basically be like asking Eddie. He doesn’t ask Ben or Mike or Beverly because they seem a lot closer with each other than they do with him.

He asks Bill, as they sit in his dimly lit bedroom one night, and sees Bill tighten his grip on the can of soda Stan got him when he first showed up.

He doesn’t know either.  
  
**  
  
Stan is seventeen and he tumbles into his room with a very drunk Bill Denbrough beside him. 

The losers had spent the night celebrating Mike’s 18th birthday in the barn, and while Stan wasn’t usually one to find himself drinking anything more than a glass of wine every now and then when his parents weren’t looking, he found small red cups being guided into his hands by Bill steadily through the night. 

“You look like you’d rather be anywhere else.” He said, when Stan asked him about it.

Stan huffed and kicked lightly at him. “You know that isn’t true.” But as he looked around at all the people around them, he guiltily had to agree. When had Mike become so _popular_?

Mike shooed everyone out who wasn’t the lucky seven around 11 pm, but by then Stan was more than tipsy. 

They had all sat around in a circle in the middle of the barn, crude jokes thrown around and playful shoves even more so. They talked about anything and everything, surrounded by the twinkling stars overhead.

Eddie notified everyone in a slurred voice that it was 1 am, and if anyone wanted to live to see tomorrow, they had all better split. 

Which is how Stan currently found himself watching Bill stumble into his dresser and curse loudly at it. Stan shushes him, perhaps louder than Bill had cursed, but he lets himself have a break. 

He moves to push Bill into the bathroom but stops, suddenly. 

Bill’s thrown his shirt off and is rummaging around in Stan’s pajama drawer for the basketball shorts Stan knows he always wears when he stays over. 

He glows, faintly, in the moonlight that dusts the room. His hair lights up like embers and Stan can almost feel the warmth of them. He’s like a sun, personified; if a man had gotten too close and embodied it. Absorbed it, as it absorbed him. 

He reminds him of a myth. A myth with too much determination and a pair of wax wings. 

In his drunk addled mind that keeps waxing poetics about Icarus’ destruction, he can’t help but think over and over again how no one had caught him. No one had seen him dive into salted sin. 

Stan thinks he could catch Bill, if he’d let him. 

His fingers twitch and he reaches out to grab at him before he knows what he’s doing. He lands on Bill’s upper arm.

“What?” He asks, quiet, not at all privy to Stan’s internal musings. He looks at him from the corner of his eyes.

Stan shakes his head, doesn’t trust what might come out of his mouth. He tugs, lightly, until Bill is turned towards him. 

Stan leans forward-

And hugs him. 

“I’m drunk.” Stan explains, in the corner of Bill’s neck where it meets his shoulders. 

He’s taller than Bill, so it’s a bit awkward, but he feels him laugh and slide his arms up to hug him back, so Stan doesn’t mind. 

He’s warm. Not like it’s any news to him, really, they’ve hugged plenty of times before. Still, it whips the breath out of him sometimes; the easy way it soaks into him, melts him, like a tangible thing.

Like the scorching, golden star that brought Icarus down, it warms the darkness enveloping it. One able to exist without the other, but together they’re the universe.  
  
**  
  
Stan hears the front door of his house open downstairs and tries to stomp out the excited fluttering in his stomach. 

“Up here!” he calls, still feigning focus on his math homework.

Footsteps slam up the stairs and Stan is rolling his eyes before his door squeaks open and a head of copper hair peaks through. 

“Room for one more?” 

Bill doesn’t wait for him to reply as he fully opens the door, walking in and closing it with his socked foot. 

Stan puts his homework down and tries not to find it endearing. He fails. “Where have you been? He asks, “you said right after school. It’s been two hours.” 

He hopes he doesn’t sound too desperate. He probably fails at that, too.

Bill just smiles at him, like he’s hiding a secret, and Stan notices he has his hands behind his back. 

He raises an eyebrow at him, patient, for now.

“I stopped to get something.” He says, conspiratorially.

“Something that took two hours?”

“Yep.”

Stan sighs, “And that is?”

Bill thrusts a small brown square at him and waits, his curiosity and excitement a heady intenseness that demands Stan’s full attention. As if Stan could ever pay attention to anything else. 

“Open it.” He encourages.

Stan does, eyes still glued to Bill’s face.

When he manages to look away, he turns his gaze onto a small hardback book laying in the torn wrapping.

‘_The Iliad_’ curls in gold font in front of him, and Stan has to take a moment to remind himself to breathe. 

It isn’t, by any means, a rare book. Judging from the condition, it isn’t particularly old either. But the thought of it, the fact Bill had not only remembered Stan’s sudden and consuming interest in Greek mythologies but had went out of his way to buy a piece of it for him. 

It sent a bright, hot spark of _something_ into him. Like a firework into a night sky. 

“Cool, huh? Bookshop outside of town had a sale going on.” He says, casually, and Stan fails to see how driving out of town for a book he could rent from the library here could be any sort of casual. 

“Thank you. I love it.” He replies quietly, and he means it. 

He sees the other relax a bit out of the corner of his eye and is suddenly hit with the realization that Bill might have thought he wouldn’t. 

“I love it.” He repeats, and he smiles at him, wide.

Bill nods, obviously pleased with himself. He goes to recline back onto Stan’s bed and makes himself comfortable. 

Stan clutches the book just a bit tighter.  
  
**  
  
Bill doesn’t leave until it’s dark out and the stars are well in the sky.

Stan sees him out with another thank you and Bill waves him off. “It’s nothing. You deserved it.” He says, and Stan feels his cheeks heat from the certainty in his voice. He thanks whoever’s out there that it’s too dark out to notice. Probably. 

When he finds himself back in his bedroom, the silence tugs at him in a lingering way. The kind of way that reminds him that there was once a person here. 

Maybe not just a person. Definitely not just a person. Bill. 

No matter how long Stan thinks about it, no matter how long they’ve orbited around each other, he can’t quite wrap his head around him. He’s a tame sort of recklessness, a team player who keeps changing the rules without telling anybody. Ostentatious in the humblest ways possible. He exudes a warmth that seeps into you so slowly, so organically, you don’t even realize you’re missing him until he’s long gone.

Stan thinks, with terrible certainty, how easy it would be to fall in love with someone like Bill.  
  
**  
  
Some music plays faintly throughout the room, and Stan hears Bill sigh behind him. 

“Alright?” he murmurs, actually focusing on his homework this time.

“Yeah. Just sick of school, you know?”

Stan turns to his bed, where Bill sits cross-legged surrounded by paper. “You mean you’re sick of everything that isn’t English class.”

Bill rolls his eyes, kindly, at him. “Sick of English class, too.” He throws the notebook in his lap to the side and his shoulders slump. “Tired of forcing myself to do this shit I know isn’t gonna help me in the future.”

“You sound like Richie.”

“Maybe Richie had a point.”

“Said no one ever?”

Bill laughs, though he adds seriously, “I mean it.”

Stan crosses his legs. “No, I get it. Not like common core has ever been a shining example of education.”

Bill tilts his head at him as a confirmation.

Stan knows he plans to write, somehow, despite his parents’ protests. A best-selling author, he once claimed with starry eyes. He was young, maybe nine or ten, when he said it, and though seven years must have passed since then, he still stuck by it, stubborn as anything. 

“I want to do something _great_. Better, fantastical, you know? Something to show what I’m made of.”

“Careful there, Icarus.”

Stan says it jokingly, but Bill stays silent for a moment. He watches him, intense, and it’s enough to make his palms sweat. “Isn’t that the guy who flew near the sun with wax wings?” he asks.

It’s common knowledge, he reminds himself, and Bill is definitely smart enough to know something as common as the myth of Icarus. But, Stan can’t help but think this is different than just knowing about it. Bill is _interested_ in it. Interested in the steadfast way Stan himself is. The thought surprises him more than it should. 

He nods, trying to seem casual.

Bill taps his knee. “Who does that make you then?”

To say Stan is a bit taken aback is putting it mildly. Bill always did manage to throw him off at the oddest moments.

He contemplates the answer for a little bit, though, but nothing comes to mind. He isn’t exactly Greek Hero material. 

“I’m not sure.” He says, eventually. “Why?”

Bill just keeps looking at him. Stan can feel a heat seep into his skin.

“Atlas.” He says, quietly, as if Stan isn’t even there. “I think you’d be Atlas.”

Stan holds his breath.

Atlas; the Titan condemned to hold up the skies for all of eternity. To carry the burden of a world he could never be a part of. 

Icarus and Atlas, neither heroes, but two souls who were damned by their own design. Tragically beautiful.

“Yeah,” he says, like a revelation, a reckoning. “Atlas, it is.”  
  
**  
  
They focus on their studies, and as time draws on, Stan is reminded that every day is leading up to something he can’t bear to think about for too long. 

He can sense it, the tension in the group as they get closer and closer to graduation. The lingering touches, the more nights they spend together to starve off the inevitable, the late-night phone calls when they can’t all crowd in someone’s house. 

Although none of them have left yet, Atlas feels their loss heavy on his shoulders, and it drowns him in the seas underneath the stars just a little bit more.  
  
**  
  
“How’s the book?” Bill asks him, leaning against the other side of Stan’s desk.

It’s after school and they’re at his house. Bill doesn’t like to spend much time at his own anymore.

“Tragic.” He drawls, and Bill smiles.

“Isn’t that the appeal?”

“Depends on who you’re asking.”

“You know who I’m asking.”

Stan pauses, really looking at Bill. As he so often does.

He seems tired, not the kind that leaves dark rings under eyes, nor the kind that carries itself heavy in one’s bones. More like the kind that makes one restless, unsatisfied.

“It’s beautiful,” He says, finally, and hopes his voice doesn’t betray anything. “in a terrible way.”

Bill nods. “What part are you at?”

“Patroclus had just marched into battle in Achilles’ armor. He won, but at the cost of his life.”

“The ultimate sacrifice play.”

Stan stays silent for a moment. 

“Achilles wanted every other Greek to die, so that he and Patroclus could rule over Troy alone.” He says, softly, and it feels too much like a confession. He diverts his gaze back to the book in his hands. 

Bill hums, contemplating. “And what does Atlas want?”

Stan sighs, “Atlas wants you to leave him alone. He’s busy.”

He laughs, loud, and Stan tries not to think about how beautiful it sounds. Bill rests more firmly on the desk, eyes never leaving his face. “Icarus thinks he’s going to try his luck.” He says, like a secret. 

Despite himself, Stan smiles. He shoves his face closer in the book.  
  
**  
  
Graduation is a week away when Bill kisses him.

It’s sudden, out of nowhere. They’re dropping their school bags in Stan’s bedroom, his parents are out, and Bill doesn’t wait 30 seconds before he cups the sides of Stan’s jaw and presses their lips together. 

He wonders when he became so easy to read, wonders how obvious he was throughout the years about how badly he wanted this to make Bill grab him with so much certainty.

Bill kisses gently at his top lip, his bottom lip, before opening his mouth to lick at the seam between them. 

Stan opens his mouth with a soft sigh and Bill’s tongue curls in, presses hot against his, against his teeth, and Stan makes a sound louder than a sigh. 

He gets lost in it, the slick slide of their mouths, and lets his hands come up to grip at any part of him he can reach. One hand curves around Bill’s waist, pulls them closer, while the other tangles in auburn hair and tugs, and this time it isn’t him who groans. 

He tugs again. 

“Stan.” Bill breathes against him.

“Bill.” He answers, just as quiet, for the two of them. 

Bill closes his eyes and leans in to close the miniscule distance between them. Their foreheads touch. Stan closes his eyes too. 

“We need to talk about this, you know.” Stan says, after a few seconds of silence. It feels like an eternity. 

Bill huffs a small laugh that Stan can feel against his lips. “Do we really?”

They open their eyes together. 

“You know we do.”

Bill hums, “Make you a deal.” He offers, and Stan, against his better judgment, is intrigued.

He’s always intrigued by Bill. 

“Which is?” he whispers.

Bill smiles, and it feels so much better to feel it brush against his mouth than to see if from across the room.

“We talk about this,” he pauses, and gives him a small, lingering kiss, “after.” He says against them. 

“After?” Stan repeats, because his brain isn’t fully functional right now, and Bill raises an eyebrow. 

Oh.

_Oh_.

Stan can feel his heart skip a beat before jumping around wildly in his chest. Something heated and heavy floods through him and turns his stomach to molten iron. 

Bill must notice, because he says, kindly, “If you want to.”

God, does Stan want to. 

He nods. “After.” He affirms, and Stan pulls Bill back in to press their lips together roughly. 

Clothing doesn’t come off as gracefully as Stan would have preferred, but he can’t find it in himself to pay it much mind. 

They tumble the short distance over to the bed, hands never leaving the other, and Stan pushes Bill gently, but firmly down on top of it. The same spot he always sits when he comes over. 

Bill runs long, warm hands up Stan’s sides, down his chest, leans up to press his mouth against Stan’s sternum and collar bone in short, staccato beats that makes his breath quicken. Stan dips his head to catch him, kissing him again, reveling in it. 

He can’t stay still. He grinds down, slow movements, and slides his mouth over to kiss and nip at Bill’s jawline as he tugs and grips at the other’s arms, neck, waist.  
Bill moans, low and gravelly in his ear, and reaches up to tangle a hand in Stan’s hair. He grinds back up, and Stan can feel the press of his erection against his own. 

“Fuck.” He curses, and Bill presses a wicked smile into his neck.

The next moment, they’re rolled over, and Bill crouches close over him. His arms bracket Stan’s head. His eyes are dilated, thin lines of sea green coiled around black pupils, and his tan skin is flushed all the way down to his chest. 

For once, Stan feels like he’s the one flying too close to the sun. 

He reaches up to tug Bill back in, and he goes easily. He fits solidly in the dip of Stan’s legs, which he widens to accommodate him. 

“Honey.” Bill murmurs against his mouth, and Stan lets out a whine. He nods, in answer to what, exactly, he isn’t too sure, but whatever it is, he wants it. Needs it. 

“Yeah.” He says, to make sure. Bill kisses him, deep and wet, and Stan almost misses the hand that unbuttons his jeans. 

Bill takes off any lingering articles of clothing between them, and Stan tries not to stare. Tries not to feel nervous about his own appearance. 

Bill knows him too well, though, and catches him for both. 

He leans in close again, chest to chest, bare skin, and bumps their noses together. He tilts his head until he can kiss him again, soft. 

“It’s just us.” He says, and were it anybody else, Stan wouldn’t feel comforted by it. Would probably just roll his eyes at them. But. But this was Bill, and it was just them.

It had always been. 

They take their time, now, and they slide slowly against each other until their breathing and groaning into each other’s mouths more than their kissing. Stan wraps his legs loosely around Bill’s waist and arches up, neck exposed so Bill can bite and suck at the soft skin near his shoulder. 

Soon, long, slick fingers dip into him, and Stan cries out at the feeling; ruts more desperately against Bill who shushes him gently. 

He grips hard at the other’s back, “I-I’m good. I’m ready. Please.” And that’s all it takes. 

Bill sinks into him, fills and stretches him until Stan can’t feel, can’t think, can’t sense, anything but him. 

“Fuck, Stan, honey,” he moans, “you feel so good.”

Molten iron turns to silver, and Stan pushes up to kiss the praise from Bill’s lips. 

When Bill moves, it’s gentle, and they murmur how good it feels, how long they wanted this, into each other’s mouths, as Bill thrusts deeper into him. 

Stan couldn’t tell anyone where one of them ended and where the other one began. It feels like the sun breaking the skyline in the dawn, like shooting stars that light the night, hot sparks in their wake. It feels like Stan is tethered to wherever Bill shines the brightest, soaked in the warmth of him.

For the very first time in his life, he chooses to drown under the weight of Bill above him.  
  
**  
  
They do end up talking about it, eventually, after a short break and another, smaller, second round. Mostly because Stan insists his parents are going to be back soon, and he’d rather not have to explain this to them when he could barely explain it to himself. 

They dress, somewhat, and Bill sits across from him, legs crisscrossed. 

He sighs, heavy, “Where do you wanna start?” 

Stan shifts slightly, “When did you realize?”

Bill gives him one of those looks again, the kind that could melt the sun. He blinks and looks down at his lap. “Probably around freshman year.” He says. 

“Anything particular?”

Bill hums, “No, not really, I think I just kind of saw you one day and thought ‘Ah, I kinda wanna kiss you’.”

Stan blinks, and Bill raises his head again to look at him. “What about you?”

He kind of wishes he never brought up the talking thing now. 

Bill’s answer was so casual, so _sure_. Stan isn’t positive how to tell explain his own, much bigger, ‘from the moment I saw you’ without seeming too overdramatic. 

He shrugs, “I think I kind of always knew.” He settles for. 

Bill is surprised, and it takes him a moment to speak. “Always?” he asks, breathless.

Stan nods. 

He sees Bill flush and try to tamper down a smile and gets dizzy off the feeling that he was the one to make him so. 

They sit in the bubbly feeling for a moment, before Stan sighs. 

“What now?”

Bill’s smile droops, and the dizzy feeling Stan gets isn’t nearly as enjoyable. 

They both know they’re not going to the same college. No hard feelings, the opposite, apparently, it’s just that they knew what they were looking for, knew what school suited them best for what they wanted to do. 

It didn’t make it any easier to accept, though. 

“Well, it’s not like we won’t keep in touch,” and Bill makes a suggestive face at him until Stan kicks at him to continue, “We can visit, call, of course, e-mail, text, write; anything, everything.” He shifts around, suddenly uncomfortable. It makes Stan uncomfortable. “I’m not,” he starts, “That is, if you want.” He stops, again, clearly frustrated. He blows out a breath. “I don’t want, you know, for this to, uh, well, s-stop.” He stutters, and immediately winces. 

He hates when he stutters. 

Stan reaches out a hand for him, and Bill goes easily. Their knees touch and Stan feels a faint impression of a memory long ago, fuzzed at the edges, but well-loved. Like stardust. 

“I don’t want this to stop either.” He says, and sees Bill visibly relax. 

“Good.” He replies. 

“But,” Stan starts, and sees Bill raise both eyebrows at him in disbelief, “But,” he repeats, “You know this isn’t going to be easy, right? I mean,” its Stan’s turn to wince, “our parents, our friends-”

“You can’t seriously think they’d mind.”

He masterfully focuses on the losers, not their parents, and Stan almost lets him get away with it. 

“No, not really, but we definitely know our parents won’t go for it.”

Bill huffs. “So?” he drags out, not looking at him. “We don’t… We don’t tell them?” When he looks back at him, his expression seems reluctant. 

Stan bites at his lip, and after a moment, nods slowly. 

“I think it’d be for the best.” He adds, quietly. Bill doesn’t say anything. “Bill?” he asks. 

He gives him a rueful smile, “It’s fine. I think I’d be more upset if it wasn’t actually a good idea.”

“’Good’ is one way to call it, I guess.” 

Bill laughs and bumps their knees together. Their eyes meet, and Stan feels the bubbling of the sun again. He watches Bill watch him, notes the way his eyes roam over his face starting at his hairline and moving carefully from eyes to cheekbones to his lips. His eyes stay there. 

“Anything else?” he whispers. 

Stan swallows, “No,” he says, “Nothing that can’t be said later on.” He adds, and Bill smiles. 

They reach for each other at the same time, and the rest of the world falls away.  
  
**  
  
May comes with a vengeance, and before Stan knows it, the losers are all gripping each other with damp eyes and bright grins dressed in blue caps and gowns. 

There are pictures, congratulations, a dinner that ends in rambunctious disaster, and just as soon as it started, it ended. 

Stan and Bill sit side by side surrounded by the rest of the losers all piled in Richie’s living room to watch cheesy romcoms they all pretend to hate. Every conversation is a poorly concealed excuse to reminisce about their childhoods. 

Stan watches the light dim from outside, feels the moon begin to rise, and can’t help but feel like it’s the beginning of the end. His shoulders feel heavy. 

Bill nudges at him halfway through Pretty Woman and raises an eyebrow at him. Stan shakes his head. 

A warm hand scoots in between them, and Bill links their fingers together just as Vivian comes down in her red gown.  
  
**  
  
Stan prepares himself, over and over, to say goodbye. 

It still doesn’t prepare him for the real thing. 

Beverly leaves first, then Richie, then Ben, then Eddie, and then, Bill. 

They say goodbye in Stan’s room, surrounded by the years of memories, which somehow makes everything worse. 

Stan holds back tears until he sees Bill’s face crumble as he launches himself in Stan’s arms.

They weep together in the day’s dying light, bathed in muted yellows and golds which hold no warmth for them anymore. 

By nightfall, Bill is gone. 

Stan does not find solace in the stars that night.  
  
**  
  
He leaves the next day, and holds Mike for a long time before getting into his father’s car taking him to the airport.  
  
**  
  
Stan is twenty, and as he stands on the deck of his student apartment and gazes longingly at the stars, he does not remember.  
  
**  
  
Stan is forty, and it ends with a call.

He feels hollowed, heavy. Like the silent, consuming void of a black hole; memories of years and years of forgotten love and happiness come flooding into him. 

So does a bright, warm impression of green eyes, soft lips, and tanned hands. 

Atlas stands in his too white bathroom and finally realizes what he’s lost.  
  
**  
  
Stan has found, over the course of his life, that truth is often stranger than fiction.

He grew up wise, too wise some might say, and was never one to shy away from the burden of reality. Never one to find himself lost in what might be, or to daydream of something he could never truly have. That just wasn’t how life worked. 

Stan had worked hard to get where he was. Had made it through the hatred and turmoil and had found success, had found love, had made something of himself that he was proud of. 

He had found solace in the stars who watched him all along the way. With them, the burdens of reality seemed bearable; present, but bearable. 

Now, he holds something sharp in his hands and feels the weight of hundreds of skies on his shoulders. 

Something whispers he’s been holding them up for too long. 

The blade glints silver in the artificial light, like one of his stars. 

Is this what he was destined for?

Despite everything, Atlas longs. Long for things he cannot have. Longs to fly too close to the sun, to feel it scorch the coldness from his bones, to melt the pressure from his shoulders, his heart. To return to skies he’s created. 

For the first time, Stan Uris longs for a world where demonic beings of pure evil hadn’t tormented the loser kids who came together to become stronger than themselves. Longs for a world where it didn’t rip every memory of Bill Denbrough he had held close to him like comets. 

Longs for a world he’s strong enough to carry. 

Warm water licks at him like an invitation. Salted seas. 

He closes his eyes.

Metal slices into skin and streaks of red dwarf stars fall from the heavens, from his arms. 

The burden on his shoulders lightens, and Atlas returns to the skies.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: posstmortem.tumblr.com


End file.
